“80% of success is just showing up”, Woody Allen.
This Friday see’s one budding young entrepreneur ‘show up’ when she co-ordinates her first major event, the CQ Mega Lifestyle Expo at Callaghan Park.
The sleepless nights of planning, worrying and second guessing really count for nought until you actually put the dream into action by showing up.
For Catrina, the co-ordinator of the Expo, showing up involved quitting a well paid full time position to enable her the time to get exhibitors, source infrastructure, develop an entertainment program, work on a site plan, battle bureaucracy and promote the event.
Of course the worrying, second guessing and sleepless nights don’t go away once you’ve decided to show up, the hard work has just begun, but you’re prepared to meet the challenges, you hope so anyway.
80% of success (and of course you can argue how accurate Woody’s claim is) though means you are still 20% short of success.
What is in the 20% you need to do in attempting to achieve success?
Last week was Small Business Week; the Rockhampton feature event on Thursday highlighted 2 local business people, Dan and Ben, who shared some of their (on-going) journey to success secrets.
A strong positive mind set and work ethic were common threads in both of their stories.
With economic experts regularly reminding us of the mining downturn, lack lustre retail trade, low business confidence, then that other debatable 80% quote; 80% of new businesses close within the first 5 years, you can understand why most people put off ‘showing up’ to pursue their business dream.
After all if you looked at all the evidence it is seemingly illogical to start a business venture, especially new one.
Yet some people do show up and start new businesses, adding diversity to their local economies and creating employment opportunities.
We need to encourage more ‘showing up’ in CQ, be it in business, sport, life; after all by ‘showing up’ you’re that much closer to achieving success in that endeavour.
Putting CQ on display; highlighting local businesses, individuals, groups who ‘showed up’ and with a strong positive mind set and work ethic gone onto to success, is one way we can inspire more to do the same.
The CQ Mega Lifestyle Expo with its strong mix of local businesses, including new start up’s, is one such display.
Draw inspiration from over 140 exhibitors highlighting ways to take advantage of CQ’s fantastic lifestyle and in the Expo’s very existence, due to one young lady decision to ‘show up’ to make it happen.
Go on, this weekend show up so that you might too ‘show up’ and be that much closer to achieving success in your endeavour.